Campbell: Domestic violence – please stop blaming the victim

Mourners hold a candlelit vigil in remembrance of three slain women – Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk and Natalie Warmerdam – in Wilno, Ont. This vigil was held in September, 2015.Justin Tang / THE CANADIAN PRESS

On Dec. 6 1989, a man went on a shooting rampage at École Polytechnique, and 14 women died.

Since that day, the killing of women in Canada has continued. Thousands of Indigenous women are missing or murdered and presently a woman is killed every six days by a partner in Canada.

Until we collectively shift our focus from judging women toward fixing what’s broken, people will continue to die at alarming rates.

We hear in the news about mass shootings, murder-suicides and femicide so often, it seems there is an established history of domestic violence.

What prevents us from stopping violence from escalating once it’s first on the radar?

Many of us hear about domestic violence but are quick to dismiss and blame victims. Perhaps out of psychological self-preservation, we look for some combination of factors about the victim that caused this to happen. She grew up in an abusive home, struggled with drugs or alcohol. She was racialized, an immigrant, or Indigenous. She was poor. She overlooked “red flags.” She kept going back.

I know the routine, but now observe the steps when I share my own story – steeling myself for pointed questions that follow. Questions about what I did and didn’t do. Not questions about him.

It’s discouraging how aggression towards women is discussed when tone and words imply that victims are responsible, or just lying because they made decisions under the circumstances that we don’t understand.

Coverage of the Jian Ghomeshi trial and the instance of three Toronto police officers accused of sexual assault have been discussed at length in violence recovery groups. While coverage of the Amanda Lindhout kidnap trial was more compassionate (perhaps victims are more credible if they’re abducted and held for ransom in a faraway land), judgment and criticism of women in media and society are a strong deterrent to providing witness testimony.

Victims shudder when we hear of judges that ask “why she didn’t keep her legs together” or suggest she was “flattered by the attention” of the man who sexually assaulted her.

How many have acquiesced to Crown proposals to withdraw charges against attackers or the making of plea deals, to avoid the promised further humiliation on the witness stand, and in the court of public opinion, drawn out over several years? I sure did.

The man on trial for the murder of three women near Wilno has a long history of violence, but on many occasions charges were withdrawn and jail sentences reduced.

If we are ever going to get ahead of this, we must recognize that the spectrum of coercion and control of women includes harassment at one end and lethal violence at the other. As a society, we must routinely reject the notion that some degrees of harassment and abuse “are common and relatively harmless.”

Then, we must demand accountability from our criminal justice system.

Consistent application of police charging policies, consequences for breaching probation, monitoring compliance with court orders, notifying victims when attackers are released from jail, considering victim input when abusers apply to shorten restraining orders – all are measures that should be happening. But there are huge cracks in this system, I assure you.

Courts must be less enthusiastic about withdrawing charges or dramatically shortening sentences of the violent, and women need broader access to legal aid to help them advocate for their safety.

Most of these issues are the jurisdiction of provinces; however the mandate letters of the federal ministers of Justice and the Status of Women both commit to making progress for women. The change needed will not happen without public pressure on elected officials.

By my calculation, eight more women will be gone by Christmas. What are each of us prepared to do in that time?

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